Performance Issues: AE CS6

Hoping to get some assistance in understanding the performance of my machine. I custom built the system this past year, and am a bit frustrated with my After Effects performance when animating motion graphics. My specs are below:

I am currently animating a project that, depending on the comp, contains around 35 illustrator layers. Once I keyframe everything, I pre-comp the layers and create a camera/orbit null. Make the layers 3D and animate the camera. I then add motion blur. The RAM preview times are frustrating, as is the lag when I am tweaking layer/camera position. It doesn't feel smooth, and sometimes is so slow it can hinder my work.

The only properties I have keyframed are position and opacity.

It is taking me somewhere near 12 minutes for a RAM preview around 30 seconds in length.

Is this the expected performance for this machine?

PS: My Quadro is set up as main GPU and GTX 680 is Cuda processor for other apps.

This does seem suspiciously slow for the machine you describe depending on the resolution and frame rate of the Composition, assuming you're attempting to RAM preview full resolution without skipping frames and that you're working 1920x1080 and not 4k resolution.

Motion blur may be the culprit as it is computationally expensive, I generally only turn it on to check the look and then turn it off as I'm working, then make sure its on for renders. It can severely slow down workflow.

You should look to see where the bottleneck is, see what's happening with RAM, disk activity, and processor activity during the RAM preview to isolate the cause of the slowdown.

hmm thanks for the input. Should I move my conformed Media Cache to the SSD Cache drive as well?

Also, I may have gotten myself in over my head. I moved from the Mac OS platform after waiting too long for a Mac Pro. Any tips on what I should be looking for? During a render my CPU is at 100% (which makes me think the CPU is the bottleneck..) and Memory usage gets way up there.

[Randy Rubin]"During a render my CPU is at 100% (which makes me think the CPU is the bottleneck..)/I>

If your CPU usage is maxed out, then yes, the CPU is the bottleneck.

First question: is your composition using the Classic 3D renderer, or the ray-tracing renderer? The ray tracer is slow, so I wouldn't use it unless you specifically need one of its features.

If you are already using the Classic 3D renderer, I'd suggest you make some workflow adjustments. Temporarily disable motion blur while you work. Use Shift-RAM Preview with lower settings (half resolution, skipping frames). Cache, prerender, or proxy heavy precomps.

It is the Classic 3D renderer. I ended up doing exactly as you suggested last night - adjusted workflow. I lowered resolution, and turned off motion blur while working. This made things much smoother.

I had some issues with the media cache though. I created a SSD Raid specifically for the media cache and allotted 100GB of space. Is there a way for my comps to automatically cache or do I have to manually push ctrl+return every time I make a tweak? The cache was finicky and sometimes wouldn't render in the background. If I started to work, the render would stop all together.

I miscalculated when I built my machine, should have gone for the dual xeons.